John Briggs

John Briggs (8 March 1930-) was a three-time member of the California State Senate from the US Republican Party. He gained notoriety with his 1978 "Proposition 6" plan, which would ban homosexuals from working as teachers.

Biography
John Briggs was born on 8 March 1930 in Mitchell, South Dakota, and he was raised by his single mother in southern California after moving there in 1935. From 1947 to 1951, he served in the US Air Force, seeing action during the Korean War. He became an insurance broker after leaving the military, and he was elected to the California State Senate in 1966, serving as a US Republican Party candidate. In 1978, he failed to secure the nomination for governor, but he gained notoriety for his "Proposition 6", which prevented gays from working as teachers; he viewed them as pedophiles and degenerates. He sought a wider application of the death penalty, nuclear energy development, and construction regulation, and his "Proposition 13" plan to reduce the property tax to 1% passed. He retired from politics in 1981 and served as a lobbyist from 1983 to 1996, and he became a real estate investor in Lake Tahoe, Nevada in 2000.